One gamer's journey through the wide world of games and gaming culture.

We all have them those love-able friends or guild-mates that are totally clueless in the game. You take them along because you feel obligated out of friendship or duty to try. They are worse than the strange noob you meet in a pug, their your friend. But what do you do when they’ve made the same mistake for the 16th time, refuse to listen, still want your help, but you are on the verge of killing them? Below are a list of noobs and how to deal with them. You will find a prevailing theme to my solutions however and I will sum it up at the bottom.

Warning: All hypothetical situations listed below assume you have already exhausted speaking with and trying to work with the offending noob on said behavior. These are extreme actions to take for extremely bad players.

1. For the healer that AFKs in the middle of your fight. Let them die. That’s right I told you to let your healer die. How is your healer going to learn not to afk in the middle of a fight putting your toon’s life at risk if their’s is never at risk? Of course this is hard to accomplish, I admit but when pulled off and they find themselves the only one dead? Priceless. (A hunter can facilitate this by Misdirecting the offending mob onto the healer, but it does require willingness of the hunter to do so.)

2. Your hunter making a case for the huntard classification? (A personal pet peeve of mine, actually these are ALL pet peeves) This all depends on what flavor of noob he has taken, because with a hunter there is more than one. The most pervasive seems to be not keeping a pet on passive in a 5/10/25 man. Now if your team is far enough back, do not enage. Let the pet die, let the hunter die call it a day. Hunter shooting before the MT has a chance to establish agro? Letting him die may prove difficult with that pesky Feign Death ability, which usually gets your healer killed. (If the healer is the same as above this could be a boon *wink*) What to do then? Work out with your buffer to ensure the pet and hunter no longer receive buffage/heals. Remember FD can’t save them from splash damage.

3. DPS class taking aggro off your tank? Now this has been reduced in most situations with the boost to tank threat. However, it has been my experience especially with dps spec tank classes and hybrids it still happens. (this means YOU ret pally, dps warrior, and death knights) Most often aggro stilling happens on the initial pull when they dps first, say on an line of sight (LOS) pull. If you are the tank, let them tank it, as my husband used to say for his sheeped mobs “You spank it, you tank it!” This will put pressure on your healer so be prepared to take back aggro if needed. If you are healer, decide FAST if your group can live if you let the idiot die. Respond accordingly.

4. Group unable to follow commands? Is “Don’t stand in the fire!” too difficult for them to understand? Let them die. Take a single wipe if that’s what it takes. But only ONE! They don’t get more of your time if they can’t be bothered to listen.

5. Tank unable to keep aggro? Well…*looks around* your choices used to be limited, but not so now. Bring someone along who can pick it up and tank it if needed the afore mentioned tank class in DPS spec would be ideal in this situation. A hunter with a tanking spec pet would work nicely as well for a quick catch of aggro loss. A rogue skilled in evasion tanking would work as well. Look at that! Not one mention of letting him die! I am getting creative 😉 (Although I ask you review the expectations of your tanks, do not have the same expectation of a dps warrior off-spec tanking as you would a prot warrior etc)

Sometimes dying consistently over and over is the only teacher for your noob.

Make the noob in your life realize they are nooby, but just because you are nooby today does not mean you have to be a noob tomorrow. Skill can be learned if you are willing to put forth the effort. If they are willing to put that effort in then by all means work with them. But there are those who don’t care, its all about their fun regardless that it takes them 2 hours to do a 30 minute run, never once considering the other people in their group are not there for their sole amusement.

Accept that perhaps its time you learn to say No. They are your friends, your beloved guildies but you, not they, are in charge of your enjoyment of this game. They are entitled to your friendship and that shouldn’t change if you decided to run with others successfully. Strong friendships endure guild changes, classes changes and not doing something together all the time.

I’ll admit I’ve been a noob, I’ve been a hunter noob and a dps warrior noob. But those times are few and far between. (Except for my warrior who is on a shelf and I will likely be a noob again if I dust her off)

I’d make a distinction between noob and newbie: noob is the obnoxious know it all, who has played this or some other game with (some) success and doesn’t take advice in any form. Knowing it all. Newbie is the one who is new to the game, wants to learn and experience the game and wants to be better in playing their class.

I still consider myself being the latter. And I constantly get abused by the former.

This post mixes the two. Then again, nothing is black and white in life nor in MMO’s.

Hmm I think then we need a new term for the person that isn’t new to the game, has played it forever, but still knows nothing about the game. Good thought, I’m on vacation right now but it should give me time to coin a new term.

For MMO’s I don’t mind people who are truly new to the game. My rant is more for those people who aren’t new but act worst than those who are. Every game gets them. Those people who refuse under any circumstance to take responsiblity and learn to play their class. I remember when I used to tank putting people on my do not run with list because they refused to back off when they started topping my agro. Back when it was wait for 3 sunders on the mob before you engage. There would be one sunder and the mage would crit and ask why people were mad we wiped. Ahh the good old days 😉